Applying a synthetic approach to the resilience of Finnish reindeer herding as a changing livelihood

Sarkki, Simo; Komu, Teresa; Heikkinen, Hannu I.; García, Nicolás Acosta; Lépy, Élise; Herva, Vesa-Pekka

doi:10.5751/es-08819-210414

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 62 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Sector-based environmental governance has been shown to be detrimental to local livelihoods in various locations (Reed et al 2016;Sarkki et al 2016). Among the most important challenges in Ukraine is rather the lack of opportunities for local participation under the authoritative forest governance.…”

Section: Legalizing Community Level Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond participation! Social innovations facilitating movement from authoritative state to participatory forest governance in Ukraine

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tuning participatory processes is often insufficient to achieve transition from authoritative state to democratic and participatory forest governance due to institutional inertia and unwillingness to truly decentralize decision-making power. Social innovations as reconfigurations of relationships between state, market actors, civil society and science can help to meet concerns of local people about forest Ecosystem Services (ES). In Ukraine, the Swiss-Ukrainian Forest Development (FORZA) pilot project initiated a social innovation process complementing regional forest planning with local participatory community development plans in Transcarpathia. This paper examines what kind of changes need to accompany the succession of participatory practices in transition processes from authoritative state to democratic forest governance, and what are the lessons learned for social innovations based on the Ukrainian case study. This paper synthesizes knowledge on the FORZA case analyzed by inductive content analysis, and integrates these local level results with a national survey (N = 244) on Ukrainian forest governance. Transition processes need to go ''beyond participation'' by (i) legal reforms to better acknowledge ES ().,-volV) ( 01234567 89().,-volV) important for local people, (ii) a change from an exclusive focus on timber to acknowledging multiple ES, (iii) changed spatial and temporal rationales of state-based governance, and (iv) recognition of local people as credible experts. Social innovations can detect key barriers to the transition during the policy experiments, and need to pay significant attention on how the novel practices can be sustained after the pilot, replicated elsewhere and up-scaled. Without such considerations, social innovation projects may only remain as a marginal curiosity.

show abstract

Section: Legalizing Community Level Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond participation! Social innovations facilitating movement from authoritative state to participatory forest governance in Ukraine

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, there are also strong counteracting forces to maintain the current form of extensive grazing on natural pastures, such as the importance of reindeer for the Sami culture and society (e.g. Riseth 2006;Nordin-Jonsson 2011) and the connection between reindeer husbandry and land rights in the current Swedish legislation (Brännlund and Axelsson 2011;Sarkki et al 2016;Brännström 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can management buffer pasture loss and fragmentation for Sami reindeer herding in Sweden?

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Today, climate change and competing land use practices are threatening rangelands around the world and the pastoral societies that rely on them. Reindeer husbandry practised by the indigenous Sami people is an example. In Sweden, approximately 70% of the most productive lichen pastures (important in winter) has been lost, either completely or because of a reduction in forage quality, as a result of competing land use (primarily commercial forestry). The remaining pastures are small and fragmented. Yet, the number of reindeer in Sweden shows no general decline. We investigated the strategies that have allowed reindeer herders to sustain their traditional livelihood despite a substantial loss of pastures and thus natural winter forage for their reindeer. Changes in harvest strategy and herd structure may partially explain the observed dynamics, and have increased herd productivity and income, but were not primarily adopted to counteract forage loss. The introduction of supplementary feeding, modern machinery, and equipment has assisted the herders to a certain extent. However, supplementary feeding and technology are expensive. In spite of governmental support and optimized herd productivity and income, increasing costs provide low economic return. We suggest that the increased economical and psychosocial costs caused by forage and pasture losses may have strong effects on the long-term sustainability of reindeer husbandry in Sweden.

show abstract

“…Akujärvi et al, 2014). The recent focus has been on the cumulative impacts of various land uses on reindeer management as a whole (Sarkki et al, 2016). It seems that, for a long time, there was a self-reinforcing feedback loop between the governance of reindeer numbers and bioeconomic pasture research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matching societal knowledge demand, research funding and scientific knowledge supply: trends and co-creation dynamics around reindeer management in Finland

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Matching knowledge Demand, research Funding and knowledge Supply (DFS) is important in order to enhance societally and policy relevant research, target funding appropriately and enhance the connectivity between science, policy and society. The DFS field around reindeer management in Finland offers a fertile case study to examine interconnected and complex trends as well as the relations between herders' and policymakers' knowledge demand, ministerial funding and independent supply of knowledge by science. We identify matches and mismatches between the DFS in a case study of reindeer management in Finland across ten inductively identified themes and in time scales of 2000-2009 and 2010-2018. The main finding was that, during the latter period, the DFS matched significantly better than in the earlier period. In order to explain this, we identify and discuss five alternative and legitimate co-creation dynamics that explain how the DFS is organizing around the reindeer management in Finland. The five dynamics represent variations in the co-creation approach, fit to varying situations, which can inform of alternative ways to better match the DFS around reindeer management, and they are also applicable in other contexts.

show abstract

Applying a synthetic approach to the resilience of Finnish reindeer herding as a changing livelihood

Cited by 20 publications

References 62 publications

Beyond participation! Social innovations facilitating movement from authoritative state to participatory forest governance in Ukraine

Beyond participation! Social innovations facilitating movement from authoritative state to participatory forest governance in Ukraine

Can management buffer pasture loss and fragmentation for Sami reindeer herding in Sweden?

Matching societal knowledge demand, research funding and scientific knowledge supply: trends and co-creation dynamics around reindeer management in Finland

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About